Monday, December 20, 2010

Back in October, I was somewhat perturbed at the Obama administration for their decision to actively fight the court-mandated cease and desist order for enforcing Don't Ask, Don't Tell. As I reasoned, all Obama needed to do in order to let the policy lapse was just accept the court order and let it go.

Sure, Obama said they were only appealing in order to get DADT repealed through proper channels, i.e., a bill passed through Congress. But, I reasoned at the time, this would never happen, not in a million years. Republicans would threaten to filibuster the action, Democrats would cave like always, the new Republican House of Representatives would push out the Democrats (it was already obvious at that point that this was going to happen) and there would not be another opportunity to repeal for at least two years and probably longer.

But they did it. They actually voted to repeal. So, hooray for gay rights! And may I say, this is a case where I am most definitely happy to have been wrong.

Even so, I can't resist a single sourpuss shrill liberal comment -- my moment of "What if Peter hadn't caught the wolf? What then?" This was by no means a foregone conclusion. Senate Democrats were racing the clock, it mostly didn't look like they were going to make it. Only some uncharacteristic party manipulation by Harry Reid as well as some frankly shocking heroics from Senator Joe Lieberman of all people (sole member of the popular "Connecticut for Lieberman" party) made this possible at all. Had this gamble not paid off, it's still highly likely that DADT would have remained a permanent fixture.

I would really like to have seen Barack Obama take a more active role in working to bring this down. Going into next year, let's not forget that Democrats still control a majority of the Senate in addition to the presidency. More than ever, passing any kind of desirable agenda will require better politics than just hopeful speeches.

Thursday, December 09, 2010

It seems that 9/11 truthers were initially very excited about WikiLeaks, as they believed Julian Assange would finally blow the lid off the massive government conspiracy. Assange told them to bugger off, and so what did they conclude? Well, this headline from a few months ago pretty much says it all:

"Any time people with power plan in secret, they are conducting a conspiracy. So there are conspiracies everywhere. There are also crazed conspiracy theories. It's important not to confuse these two. Generally, when there's enough facts about a conspiracy we simply call this news." What about 9/11? "I'm constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud."

God damn those CIA agents they're everywhere! The one guy who seems to know actual government secrets and has been making them public just as fast as he can, and he seems to have no interest in finally proving that it was a controlled demolition, or invisible missiles from dimension X, or whatever. It can't be that there is no evidence of an actual conspiracy... clearly the only explanation is that THEY got to him first!!!

(Please note: I'm not in the mood to open this thread up to the crackpots. Any comments on how blind I am to the conspiracy will be moderated out. Anyone who posts such a thing on the associated Facebook thread will be defriended, immediately and with extreme prejudice. Know why? Because I'm secretly a CIA agent. BWAHAHAHAHAAAAAA)